


Violence and Inevitability

by fragilelittleteacup



Category: True Detective
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Kissing, M/M, Swearing, Synaesthesia, Unhealthy Relationships, i just finished season 1 and I am having some feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-08 23:33:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8867680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fragilelittleteacup/pseuds/fragilelittleteacup
Summary: Rust will always go back to him.





	1. Chapter 1

She tried to have sex with him.

She kissed him, desperate and angry, her hands burning where they touched his kin. Rust pushed her away with mournful terror, so afraid of her, so horrified by the way his hands lingered on her waist as he tried to put more distance between them, so disgusted by the wet imprint her mouth had made on his neck. Like a brand. Like a mark of ownership, a stamp of sin, evidence of this moment. He felt too exposed in his white singlet, too vulnerable, faced with her desperation and insistence.

“Stop,” he growled, a helpless edge to his voice, “stop it, go home.”

“Be honest with me,” she begged, “be honest with me now,”

He pushed her away. Hard, this time, repaying her indignity and cruelty in kind.

“Fuck off!” His voice was shaking, and he stumbled backwards, felt the edge of his table collide with his legs, “Get the fuck out of here!”

She ran, in her flower print dress, with her tear-streaked face and her smooth features, as if she were the victim- as if she hadn’t just tried to force herself on a drunk man, on someone who was so fucking lonely and broken that he slept on a mattress and had no furniture. He kicked out at whatever was nearest to him, sending books and clothes flying. He screamed at the injustice of it all, at the cruel feud he’d been forced into the middle of, at the blame that rested almost entirely at the feet of his only friend on the planet.

The world was burning, shimmering with furious heat, but he could feel it fading, fading out. He fell to his knees.

He hadn’t cried like this since his daughter’s birthday.

 

***

 

He went to Marty’s house.

“She tried to,” he couldn’t force the words out, “Maggie, she tried to… but I pushed her away, Marty, I said no,”

Hands grabbed his shirt. Marty’s face, too close, too angry, too terrifyingly like the criminals they had both prided themselves in putting in prison. Playing the victim, again, certain he’d played no part in his wife’s breakdown when he was, in fact, the cause of it. Rust swayed with the force of the motion, his back colliding with the wall. His eyes fell closed, and the world was a terrifying mess of violent colour.

“Marty,”

“Shut the _fuck_ up, you piece of _shit._ You put your hands on my wife, huh?”

He remembered what Marty had said; ‘Don’t mow my fucking lawn.’ Knowledge of how deep Marty’s selfishness ran, and how he would refuse to blame himself for this, made Rust weak. He knew that Maggie coming onto him would be his fault, entirely, in the eyes of Marty. He wanted to fight. He wanted to yell and scream and prove that this wasn’t his fault, that he hadn’t done this. But he knew that he would never win. The fire inside him was ebbing, dying. Fading out. He was too weak to fight any more.

“Answer me! Answer me, goddamnit! Did you touch my fucking wife?!”

He opened his eyes, and looked at Marty. His supposed friend.

“I’m so fucking tired, Marty,” he said, and he could feel his voice breaking, weak and gravelly, “I didn’t do shit. She came to me. And I said no.”

Marty shoved him back against the wall, and Rust fell down as the air left his lungs. His head hung and his shoulders slumped.

“Don’t you fucking give me that innocence bullshit! You seduced her, you motherfucker, you fucking piece of fucking shit!”

“No, Marty, please,”

The first punch was the worst. Because he wasn’t prepared for it, didn’t see it coming. The next one was less surprising, and the ones that came after that were even less so. He didn’t fight back, because he no longer had it in him, and surrendering to Marty’s fury seemed to be the only way to emerge as his friend. As his face was pounded and his ribs were kicked, Rust was horribly aware of the injustice of this, of the poison that ran through Martin Hart’s blood. A juvenile, petty, self-serving poison. Eating up everything it came near, every single person that Marty befriended or touched.

Rust reached out, one hand gripping Marty’s calf, and even as darkness filled his head, even as the punches came harder and harder, he relished the physical contact, loved having his hand against another human being. Against Marty. His synaesthesia turned everything a dull purple, and the taste of blood was overwhelming.

He’d always felt that his relationship with Marty was a storm. A swirling mass of violence and anger, tempered by hesitant touches and friendly concern. Staggering between one extreme and the other, and he realised he’d been dreaming of Marty’s lips since that day he’d been pushed up against the lockers in the station bathroom. He remembered curling his hands around Marty’s wrists, remembered how they’d been pressed together.

The darkness came, like a biblical rain, and he welcomed it.

 

***

 

Marty left him there.

On the floor, bleeding, unconscious. His white singlet torn, his eyes closed, his face swollen and bruised.

He went to a bar and drank. He kept drinking until he couldn’t remember why he’d started, and when he woke up, his cheek was against sticky wood, his head pounding. The bartender was telling him to leave, and suddenly the realisation of what he’d done hit him, and he vaulted off the side of the barstool, vomiting as the gruesome violence he’d just committed filled his mind with a terrifying vividness. He stumbled to his car, drove to his house, and threw open the door.

There was a patch of blood on the floor, a dent in the wall, and the space where his friend had been lying was now empty. Marty covered his face with his hands and tried to breathe, but found his chest was too tight, his throat was choking him.

“Rust! Rust, I’m so fucking sorry, Rust, where are you, Jesus fuck, please tell me you’re still here, I can fix this-”

He searched the house, panicked and drunk.

Rust was gone.

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

t had been two days.

Maggie had run to her father's house, and he couldn’t see his daughters again. The weight of guilt was suffocating him, and the worst of it was that he hadn’t seen Rust since that day. The wrongness of what he’d done was sickening. He’d vomited the morning after, told himself it because of the alcohol, but really it was because there was a patch of blood on his floor and he couldn’t scrub it out, couldn’t get the stain to disappear, couldn’t fix the dent in the wall. He’d been to Rust's house, broken in and searched the sparse apartment, but had found nothing except more bloodstains.

“Rust,” he’d found himself crying, as he stood Rust’s barely-furnished kitchen, looking at the way blood had stained the sink water pink, “fuck, Rust, what have I done.”

He didn’t have the right to cry. He didn’t have the right to feel sorry for himself, yet he still did.

 

***

 

“Hey, Marty. Check it out.”

He looked up from his paperwork, first at the Detective that had interrupted him, and then in the direction that the Detective was looking. He dropped his pen to the desk.

Rust was walking with a limp, half of his face swollen and blackened by bruises. He held his ribs protectively, his upper body tipped to one side, as if he were in agony, as if he could barely stand to breathe at all. He resolutely did not look in Marty’s direction, and Marty couldn’t move, couldn’t get up from his seat. He was filled with nauseous guilt, and he thought he might vomit again.

“Jesus, Cohle,” their Sheriff said, as the room was reduced to hushed silence, “the hell happened to you?”

Rust stood still, swayed on his feet, his lean frame noticeably trembling whenever he inhaled. The Sheriff, who had never liked Rust, reached out a hand to steady him.

“Who the fuck did this to you? Cohle?”

“I quit.” Rust rasped, his voice hoarse and broken. He swallowed, his eyelids fluttering up and down.

“Okay, sure. How about you let me call you an ambulance, huh? Marty, come over here and give us a hand-”

“No. Don’t let him touch me.”

Rust moved away from him, and Marty stood, hands bunched into fists by his sides. Their eyes met, the whole station watching them, and Marty wished he could speak, wished he could apologise, wished he could make it all better, take back the shit he’d done-

“Fuck you, man,” Rust whispered, his lips split and bleeding. Marty swallowed thickly, and nodded.

He watched Rust leave.

The room was silent after he left, and everyone turned to stare at him. The gashes on his knuckles suddenly felt deeper, and he knew he’d split the skin by clenching his fists. He slowly unfurled his hands, and winced at the pain, knowing fully well that he deserved it. There were tears in his eyes, and he was haunted by the look in Rust's eyes.

“My office, Marty.” The Sheriff demanded, his voice disgusted. “Now.”

 

***

 

Marty sat in his car outside Rust's house for an hour before he gathered enough courage to knock on the door. He knocked once, twice, three times.

No answer.

He went to the hospital after that, and found Rust hooked up to an IV, bandages and stitches covering his face. It was haunting, seeing such a strong, enigmatic man reduced to this kind of helplessness. Marty recalled the night that Rust had come to dinner, a bunch of flowers in his hand, tears in his eyes, and remembered the vulnerability that had always run just under Rust's skin. And he hated himself even more for what he had done. He was suspended for a month without pay, but it wasn’t enough. He deserved to be punished. He deserved to suffer, for hurting a man who had helped so many people and saved so many lives; a man who was already so broken, so hurt.

A man who was his friend.

There was an Officer outside the hospital room, hands folded, face full of reproach and anger.

“You’re not going in there,” he said.

Marty held up his hands, let regret pour into his expression. “I just wanna apologise-”

“Sheriff's orders, sir, are to keep you the fuck away from this man.”

“Please, just let me see him, I want to make this right-”

“No. You get the hell of here, sir, before I call this in.”

He looked over the Officer’s shoulder, saw Rust was looking right at him, blue eyes open and clear, as unreadable and distant as he’d always been. Except now one eye was swollen, almost completely obscured by bruising. He was black and blue in a room of white. Abused and unmoving, like a body in a morgue. The comparison made Marty ill.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, as if it were just the two of them, as if he could possibly make this right with words, “I’m sorry, Rust, I really am-”

“Get out of here.” The Officer pushed him away. “Now.”

He stepped backwards, and part of him was glad to flee from that empty gaze, that stare he could not decipher. Better that Rust hate him, or despise him; Marty didn’t know what to do with this emptiness.

 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Rust stood in front of Marty’s house, and breathed deep.

During his time as a cop, he’d seen it again and again; people who continually returned to their abusers, because of devotion, dependency, love, blindness– or some vicious combination of all those motivators. It was a cruel cycle, and he had watched it happen endlessly. A never-ending circle of destruction. They had no choice. They would always go back, because that was what their life dictated they do.

He wondered if that was what he was doing now.

He knew that Marty would, likely, hurt him again, somehow. He knew that he wanted to touch Marty, still, and that the desperate yearning inside him would likely never cease. His heart had been torn to shreds over his lifetime, destroyed by the death of his child and the loss of his wife, and his affection for Marty was nestled somewhere warm and undamaged inside him.

Only, now, that part of him was damaged too. Tainted by anger and fear, because Marty had hurt him. As Rust, after his miserable war of a life, should’ve expected; nothing good ever came to him that wasn’t taken away, or mutated into something violent.

He considered the wood panelling of the door, thought back on the month that had passed since Marty had beaten him unconscious. He’d known that he would return here. He’d known it the moment he met Marty’s gaze in that hospital, known that it was inevitable. There had been a desperate apology in Marty’s eyes, and Rust wanted to believe in it. Wanted to trust in that regret, that guilt, that remorse. Wanted to believe that this experience would change Marty for the better.

But he fucking doubted it.

Surrendering to the inevitability of their messily tangled lives, he raised his hand, and knocked.

For a moment, nothing. Then the door swung open, and Marty was standing there, frozen in place, eyes big and shocked.

“…Rust.”

Rust nodded, feeling the shutters come down, feeling his face become cold and angry. The beating returned to him, vivid in memory. The row of stitches above his eye was yet to heal, and he watched Marty’s eyes roam his face, seeing the raw scarring and the crooked angle of his nose. He felt a delicious thrill of satisfaction when Marty’s face filled with guilt.

“Just let me the fuck in, Marty.”

 

***

 

They sat around Marty’s table and drank lemonade.

“I haven’t had a drink since that night.” Marty said quietly, looking down at his soda, “Couldn’t stomach it.”

Rust sat back, and did not reply. Marty looked up, expression desperate and remorseful.

“I’m sorry, man,” he said.

Rust met his eyes, and stayed silent. Marty fidgeted.

“Just tell me how to make this better. I know I fucked up– I fucked you up, I fucked my wife up, I fucked up that poor girl that I was seeing… I don’t know how to fix this, Rust. I can’t see my kids again, I’m on suspension, I’m-” he sucked in a sharp breath, rubbing his face, “I’m a fucking mess, and I need to fix this. I need you, man. I always needed you, I guess, and now I know that I… I want you back.”

Rust felt a swell of anger. He smiled bitterly, and stood.

“Wait- Where’re you going?”

“If all you care about is clearing your own conscience, Marty, you can go fuck yourself.”

“Rust, don’t,” Marty stood, too, “Don’t go, just let me try and-”

He reached out to stop Rust leaving, an arm around his chest- he realised his mistake too late, when Rust made a small, shocked noise of pain and doubled over, clutching his ribs.

“Shit,”

“Get the fuck off me.” Rust pushed his hands away, and realised that a pulse of fear had sounded in his voice, and hated knowing that weakness was showing. He breathed in deep, holding his ribs. He tried to straighten up, but instead found himself falling, on his knees again, Marty’s hands on him again. This time, Marty was holding him up, and Rust found himself leaning against him, eyes shut tight, breaths hissing hard and fast through his teeth.

“I’m sorry, Rust,” Marty whispered, “I’m so sorry. All you ever did was help me. And I… I fucked this up.”

“Yeah,” Rust growled, “You did.”

“What can I do?” Marty pleaded, one hand on Rust’s sternum, holding his steady, one hand on the nape of his neck, just to touch him. “Please, Rust-”

Rust grabbed his shirt, yanked him close. Pressed his lips to Marty’s mouth, hard and angry.

He expected Marty to push him away. Marty was as homophobic a red-blooded American as Rust had ever met, and had always been old-fashioned in his political view of the world. What he did not expect was for Marty’s mouth to soften under his, deepening the kiss slowly. He didn’t expect Marty’s hands to smooth over his skin, fingers tugging gently at his hair.

And it hurt. Knowing Marty was touching him the way he’d always wanted, and that, now, he could not walk away from this selfish, abusive, cruel man; that hurt him even more than everything else.

The world was collapsing.

A sob built in his throat, and was muffled by Marty’s mouth. Marty pulled away, and looked at him with honest, clear eyes.

Rust leaned against him, and cried.

 

 

 


End file.
